Survey Sheds Additional Light on Big Data Trends

Talend, a purveyor of open source middleware solutions for, among other things, Big Data integration, recently released the results of a small data survey it conducted to get a better perspective on how data professionals are implementing the technology at their companies.

The 231 professionals surveyed were drawn from North America (49%) and EMEA (51%). 60% of the respondents were in IT and 36% had business titles. Of the original sample, 95 had a Big Data strategy and this subset was asked a series of questions about their experience. (Those companies without a strategy indicated they did not distinguish Big Data from existing corporate data.)

Here are a few of the highlights:

41% of the companies have a strategy for dealing with Big Data – this indicates a growing adoption of the technology according to Talend

48% of Big Data initiatives are driven by the business; 39% by IT; and 13% cross-functionally

Predictive analytics – increasing its depth and accuracy – is the number one driver for Big Data.

62% indicated they are realizing Big Data business benefits with business process optimization (28%) and boosting marketing and sales (24%) leading the way.

On the downside, 24 companies reported receiving no business benefits, which may mean they could use some help in improving their Big Data skill sets, governance and management

The types of Big Data being used today include web and social media (57%), followed by sales data (54%).

Open source Apache Hadoop and Hadoop-based distributions accounted for 60% of the Big Data implementations either in use or in planning

In the information arms race, companies that can collect and analyze more information should be able to make faster, better-informed decisions compared to their competitors, e.g. by maximizing customer wallet share, by knowing when and why customers may leave, by efficiently creating and targeting new markets, or by deterring fraud,” the Talend survey states in its introduction. “To date most of the big data discussion has been about big data technology. The goal of this survey and whitepaper is to highlight big data adoption challenges, business objectives and benefits, as well as big data technologies being used.”

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